Monday, February 18, 2008

I drove across California yesterday and the grasses, usually dry and golden-brown, covered the hills in a lush green and blossoms hung off the rows and rows of branches in the orchards. Up in the mountains, snow clung to the shady spots, and I looked out as cars weaved around me and I weaved around semis and I mined my ipod for something to make me feel like I haven't felt before.

These drives are like commutes now. Six hours alone on the highway and I can recognize all the singular elements along the way. I know instinctively how much time I have left. I don't get stressed out, I don't worry much at all, I don't feel anything one way or the other. I'm just going to work.

I always think that maybe this is the last time, that I'll soon be moving on, but somehow, with a few passing weeks or months, I'm always back on the same highways, running the same circles, seeing the same people. Everyone knows everyone if you dig just a little and there is some comfort in that, but I'm always trying to break through to another plain, somewhere that probably doesn't really exist. No matter how much I want to leave it all behind, its all ingrained in me. As insignificant as I feel a lot of the time, I am an essential element. I think we all are.

At the end all this, past all of the barriers, beyond all the walls, all the burdens, all the glamour and the delusions, all the way to the end of where ambition and hope and desire can lead you, where class is gone and the clothes are off and the things you have don't matter, I think that there is just a couch and some music, a bed and someone kind laying beside you. I think there is just a good conversation, and a warm room, and a set table, and problems that don't weigh you down enough to make you sink. I think that maybe the only thing that there is to discover from life, is that there really isn't anything to discover.